10. Portuguese
Brazil recently overtook the United Kingdom as the
world's sixth-largest economy, and with the
football World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics
just around the corner, all eyes will be on this
Portuguese-speaking "Bric" nation.
--
These rankings are based on a survey carried out
for the CBI Education & skills survey 2012, in
which 542 UK firm managers were asked which
languages are useful to their business.

9. Japanese
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's love of the
lambada may have earned him more ridicule than
respect, but his proficiency in Japanese – he spent
two years teaching English in Japan – is held in
high esteem among his parliamentary colleagues,
and came in useful on a recent trade mission to
Japan.

8. Russian
Relations with Russia haven't exactly been warm
since the end of the Cold War – from the
Litvinenko poisoning to the infamous Moscow "spy
rock" – but according to the Government's Trade
& Investment website, Russia is the UK's fastest-
growing major export market.

7. Cantonese
The majority of the UK's Cantonese speakers have
ties to Hong Kong, where it is the official language.
But Cantonese is spoken much more widely
around the world, with nearly 70 million native
speakers.

6. Arabic
Any who doubts the importance of Arabic-speaking
business to the United Kingdom's economy should
take a look at The Shard – the tallest building in
Western Europe was largely made possible by
Qatari investment. Or they could just ask a
Manchester City fan.

5. Polish
Polish makes the top five, with 19 per cent of UK
managers rating it as useful for their organisations.
Large-scale Polish migration to the UK after the
country's admission to the European Union made
the headlines, but as the largest consumer market
of the new EU member states and the only EU
country to avoid recession since the downturn
began, business ties with Poland extend
considerably further.

4. Mandarin
The official language of China – the world's most
populous and economically dynamic nation –
features highly in managers' preferences. In 2006
Brighton College became the first school in the
United Kingdom to made studying Mandarin
compulsory for all 13 year-olds.

3. Spanish
Valued as a major European language but also as
the leading language of fast-growing Latin
American economies – as well as its continued
rise to prominence in the United States – Spanish
is rated as useful by 37 per cent of the employers
surveyed.

2. French
It may be in seemingly terminal decline as a
subject of study in our secondary education
system, but proficiency in French remains a highly
sought-after skill among UK employers, with 49
per cent rating it as useful for their organisations.

1. German
Germany remains the largest single export market
for British goods outside of the USA, and Europe's
largest economy – with a GDP of more than €2.4
trillion – continues to defy the eurozone downturn .
So it's no surprise that UK companies want to hire
employees who know their umlauts from their
eszetts.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9487434/Graduate-jobs-Best-languages-to-study.html?frame=2314788#?frame=2314790

this is great.But that is if you want to do business outside the borders of Nigeria. If you are in Naija, you need to know igbo, Yoruba, pidgin and warri

Abuja gals be lyk..."baby wat d u get 4 me 4 ECLIPSE".

Where's any Nigerian language

I want to learn Chinese and French.

Ok.. Good

Thank you, very timely for me to decide my priority between French and Spanish.

french,chinese n German will do....

Estoy feliz de que puedo hablar muy bien el español

Abro,! Why u no write Igbo Language! Are u a learner? Onitsha Main market things on my mind........

Op, this ur list is rotten and fails to be comprehensive enough.
Where is our Best seller; pidgin english?

It is very popular here and i need not explain the size of Nigeria's Market and state what my country exports.

I know Spanish and a lil Portuguese

11. IGBO.
Not for Nigerians but Asians

But you are suppose to list English as No.1 Germany 2 and so on instead of listing German as No. 1

Okay, this is for the UK.
Though I stand corrected, but I'd have thought English alone was sufficient to function in that market. An advanced, highly-diversified economy like Britain is not overly dependent on other markets per se.

For Nigeria, I'd say working proficiency in French, and maybe Chinese, is very important, specifically for business and technology graduates.

Many educated Francophone West Africans speak English, giving them a distinct advantage for multinational jobs in West and Central Africa. When the Oyinbo companies come calling, they want people who are bilingual and can cover both Anglophone and Francophone markets.

where can i learn these languages

Me yamo mamacita - spanish
Afa m bu mamacita - igbo


Let's do business spanish is the most valuable in America

Honestly, I v shotlisted these languages to study them.
I observed last year that they are the leading languages in the world.

This article is obviously for a British audience.

What Nigerians need to learn are French (for our Francophone neighbours) and Mandarin (for our Igbo traders who go to Guangzhou for business).

Nna maka y u forget to put igbo for der,dats d language we use for importer nd exporter. Chinekeeeeee uwa di egwu

Am fluent in German and French. Thank You!

"Foreign" languages that can help you in business HERE IN NIGERIA
-Yoruba
-Hausa
-Igbo (WAZOBIA)

philusaau: Estoy feliz de que puedo hablar muy bien el español

ya somos dos hermaño

Mandarin and French for me

Great thread. I am really interested in various foreign languages.

God2man.

That's why I want to add Arabic n Spanish to my memory hard disk

Mandarin, French and Arabic - with these you can almost go around the world language-barrier-free (taking English to be known already)

They are the ones I admire

Why did U exclude ISOKO, URHOBO, IJESA & IJEBU.

I laff in swahili. U no put igbo language. When be say na 1/3 pound road aba. Be the main thing.

U no put yoruba wey be say 128 nnamdi azikwe street idumota is the cbd of lagos.

U no put afrikaans (abi na wetin dem dey speak for zimbabwe sef) wey be say na dir the end time newspaper they see enuf news. Abeg change ur report joor

Ijaw

I speak russian fluently...good for me i guess